It had been a long journey, but finally we had the house built and we were all moved in. The house was technically finished, but there was still a heap of things that needed to be completed. You see we worked out that what the builder was charging us to do some items, was a lot more than we would spend if we were to outsource the work to contractors our self.

Where we saved money

In general, builders will add a minimum of between 15%-25% on top of what it actually costs them to complete certain items on your house. Most of the time it’s just easier to accept the additional cost and move on, but in some cases it’s just as easy for you to manage the contractors yourself and save the extra money.

Fence

The fencing was an obvious one for us to complete using our own contractors. The reason for this is that it is common practice for neighbors to share the costs associated with the fencing. As both neighbors get use out of it, the costs should be split 50/50 and normally most people are OK with doing this.

The major issue that arises with some people, is that if the fence is already built before they plan on building on their land – then sometimes the neighbors are not as willing to pay for their half of the fence, seeing as you needed it prior to them ever being there.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any issues with splitting the bill 50/50 so that all worked out well.

Builders Quote – $6,000

We did it for – $3,500

Saving – $2,500

Driveway

Doing the driveway with our own contractors was a really big money saver. The builder wanted to charge us about $12,000 to do our driveway (including the path leading to the front door). I consulted with some friends at work and a few of them had phone numbers of people they had used before to do their own concreting and driveways. I phoned one of the guys and ended up getting the whole lot done for $7,500.

Builders Quote – $12,000

We did it for – $7,500

Saving – $4,500

Landscaping

We did all the gardens, top soil, grass and rocks ourselves (with help from my parents and youngest brother).

I will never forget the day we laid the grass. As I sit in an office all day everyday for work, this manual labor stuff is pretty foreign to me and I really didn’t enjoy it. It rained almost the entire day and it was that time of year where it is just entering into winter time, so it was bone chilling rain.

Of course the minute that we finished, the rain ended and it was perfectly sunny. Still, it ended up looking pretty good in the end.

Builders Quote – $3,500

We did it for about – $1,500 (plus many hours of labour)

Saving – $2,000

Patio

Originally I didn’t want a patio roof, but my wife convinced me that it would be a good idea so that we could get a dog. It turns out that we got the dog and then needed to race around to get a patio cover. At this point in time The Rick was an outside only dog and so he really needed somewhere a little bigger than his dog house to hide in when it rained.

He was so tiny then! I also love that his food bowls are so bright and new looking.

What it looks like as of 1 hour ago.

Note in the photo that the dog house is gone – Ricky ate a big chunk of it and we had to bin it 🙁

I never got a quote from the builder to build a patio, as I never thought I was going to need one. So I can’t tell you the difference between the builders cost and our own, but I can tell you the difference between the various patio builders we contacted.

One of the vendors that we contacted was going to charge us $10,000 for that cover, we ended up shopping around and got a local guy to do it for about $3,000 for the exact same warranty and materials. So be sure to shop around!

Things I would do the same

Our Mortgage

The thing that worked out really well for us was to split the loan into 2 different parts. We put 70% into a standard variable loan and the remaining 30% into a fixed interest loan for 5 years. The benefit of this arrangement was that we were able to pay back heaps extra onto the variable loan without incurring any additional fees, while we had the safety of knowing that the fixed loan would not be having its interest rate increased for the next 5 years.

That’s why when you look at our loan repayment graphs there is a colossal amount replayed on the variable portion of the loan and not the fixed part. Although now that it has come out of the 5 year fixed term we are starting to really hammer into it.

At the time of getting these loans, interest rates were at 7.5% and going higher by the day. All the “experts” were saying they were going over 10%. It turns out that interest rates got to about 9.25% before retracing to about 3-4%. Unfortunately our fixed loan stayed at the higher interest rate, but I still don’t regret the decision. It was the smart thing to do when faced with such a huge amount of debt and a pretty tight budget.

Reading Lights

We organised to put in a couple of down lights and light switches at the head of our bed. This was a great decision and I would do this for any new house that I was building, as it’s just so handy to be able to be in bed and just flick the switch without getting up.

This 1 Power point

Our electrician actually suggested that we put this power point in this particular spot, and it comes in SO handy! It is on the edge of the bench top and it’s great for cooking and vacuum cleaning. I never thought it was going to be a that good of an idea, but I love it now.

Things I would do differently

Data Cables

One thing I wish I did differently was get the house fitted with cat5 or cat6 data cables. I always just assumed we would use wireless throughout the house, but as our house is very long the wireless never really reaches the other end of the house very well. So we ended up paying some guys to come and fit our data cables a couple of months after the house was built.

Lighting

Don’t skimp out on the lights or light switches. We really need a couple of extra lights in our living room as the ones we have in there are way too small for the size of room they are expected to illuminate.

Two way light switches are another thing I wish we did more of, they are so handy and only cost a small amount extra to install.

Gas

Two things with the gas actually.

Make sure it is going to be turned on when you move in. Our builder forgot to tell us when we needed to organise the gas to the house, therefore when we moved in we had no gas for our hot water heater and we had to migrate to my in-laws house every night just to have a shower.

Make sure the gas is connected into the kitchen. All of our kitchen appliances run on electricity, despite the house being connected to the town gas supply. I really like to cook with gas, so this actually bothers me quite a bit, but not enough to go out and get it retrofitted now that the house is complete.

Finally, I happened to come across this old photo of Ricky when he was a puppy while I was searching through all the house pictures I took.

He was such a cute little puppy! I think he was 6-8 months old here.

I will leave you on that note, I hope you enjoyed the series and that you have a better understanding of building a house from the land up.

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As always, please leave any comments that you might have below in the comments section below. I would love to hear from you.

For a not very manual guy you did do a lot of things yourself! Amazing how costs change when you DIY. I mean, $2500 of labor to put a fence ? And probably even more since they get better prices than we do on materials…Pauline recently posted..Being Outside of Average

The pictures look great and great job on doing some of it yourself. I have to admit that I don’t know the first thing about doing a lot of that, so I don’t know how far I’d get. We have a similar thing to your power point thing, it’s a life saver!John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted..5 Frugal Ways to Start Investing Now

Excellent post and a great series! It’s really cool to see how you went about building while we are going through a different process – renovating a home. I am a bit jealous of your ability to pick and choose things since it was built from the ground up, versus us who have to decide what is worth adding in and how far to go with it (you can start ripping open walls, but is it worth it to add x or y?).

The driveway costs are outrageous! Probably because I didn’t look into them yet. The driveway at our new house is in serious need of work as there is literally at least an inch to 3-inch drop from the garage. The fence prices seem reasonable, and we are considering installing a privacy fence a few years down the road.

I hope to DIY as much as I can, even with things like electrical. I might hire one of my friends next summmer to work with me for about a week. My (tentative) goals are: 1) tear down retaining wall 2) tear down and rebuild the deck 3) redo the driveway 4) close off the chain-link fence 5) build a garden and 6) landscaping around the house.

Thanks DC 🙂
Make sure that whatever you decide to do that you take lots of photos so that you can post about it. Blog posts are always better when you can actually see what the person is talking about.

I was mortified by the cost of the driveway, so there was no way in hell that I was going to get ripped off letting them do that.

You have a lovely home. You did great in doing things on your own. You did save a lot and I can say every part of the house is worth the price. I enjoyed reading every bit about it. Thanks a lot for sharing this!Jane recently posted..Up to 28% off on your vacation at FocalPrice

I think it all looks awesome~! I especially like your cozy back yard and covered patio. I think you did awesome! When is your wife due again?Holly@ClubThrifty recently posted..Saving for Retirement: Don’t Make Excuses

I love your puppy! Good for you guys for doing all that yard work, it is HARD work! I’m all about savings when it comes to home renos etc but I’m not sure I’d have it in me to do all that sod! I love your electrical outlets, it looks so sad (NA ones looks angry).Catherine recently posted..Curb Watching and Ways to Get Free Stuff

Rickster, the pup! Love it! I can not believe he chewed through his dog house. What a rascal. Thanks for sharing this series. Very informative. Great job on saving so much with your manual labor, and the house is simply gorgeous.That driveway quote is insane. (Btw—Lexi is sitting next to me in her high chair pointing at Rick’s puppy photo and making an “O” with her mouth, lol!)Jennifer Lynn @ Broke-Ass Mommy recently posted..A Mish-Mash of Goals

Yes, well, that’s not all he chewed through when he was younger. Rascal doesn’t quite cover it, but I won’t go there…
Your daughter is so cute! I’m sure she and Ricky would have a ball playing together – Damn that Pacific ocean being in the way!

Wow, I never thought about taking bits and pieces from the contractor and doing them yourself. I’d imagine they would get annoyed with this, but it obviously was a great idea and saved you THOUSANDS of dollars! The few thousand you saved on the landscaping alone had to be worth the time you put into it. 🙂 Even if your back hurt a bit afterwards.Jason @ WSL recently posted..Make Sure You’re Borrowing From a Reputable Lender

My parents just did a kitchen remodel to their house and apparently it is code here to have a socket installed on the end of their counter island thingy. They agree it is such a great place for an outlet and use it all the time.

Great tips, I’ll ahve to write these down since we are considering building a house ourselves!

Glen, I love this series of posts! The puppy is so cute there hehe. Looks like you saved a lot of money doing all that stuff yourself – but I can’t imagine the labor, must have been frustrating especially with the rain – the way it played tricks on you.

Hmm, I haven’t even though of data cables throughout the house, but that makes perfect sense. I’ve installed over 40,000 feet of data cable, should have called me up 🙂 Come to think of it, I’m going to wire my first home with a computer lab layout.Veronica @ Pelican on Money recently posted..Watch Out when Buying Gold

It was great that you were able to do some of things either yourself or to hire someone less expensive to do those things for you!

Interesting that you mention the data cables. When my husband and I built our new house in 2005 that was at the top of his list. Actually the townhouse be built just prior to that he made sure to have fully wired as well. We use wireless for our tablets but otherwise our house is fully networked.

Awe Ricky is so cute! Nice job on all the stuff you did yourself. Most people would give up and pay someone else to do it, probably me. ha ha! Of course I don’t own a home so…:)Budget and the Beach recently posted..Bah Humbug: Why I don’t really do Christmas

Very nice home. It’s amazing how handy you can become when you see some of the estimates from contractors. We (mostly my husband) have built a deck, laid sod, installed sprinklers, built a fence, and many other things. Never would have guess we could do all that, but it’s really motivating when it’s your place. Cute puppy pic!Kim@Eyesonthedollar recently posted..Reasons to Love Your Used Car

I actually did run Cat6e cable throughout my whole house. It didn’t take very long, but I ran two lines from every room in the house to a central location in the garage. I have never used it though. I also ran cable in case we wanted it to every room also never used. I wired our living room for Dolby 7.1 surround. Never bought a surround sound system.
I totally future proofed our house for the next owner, but I have not even used it.Derek @ Freeat33 recently posted..How to combat inflation on your retirement income

Your house looks amazing. Is so interesting to see houses from other countries. I really like the tile that your pooch is sitting on outside.
I agree that you should never skimp on lighting. I really need to add a few to my living room.

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